Constitutionalism and Cultural Identity as Revolutionary Concepts in German Political Radicalism, 1806–1819: the Case of Karl Follen

Abstract

The aim of this essay is to investigate the concepts of cultural identity and national sovereignty as they emerge in radical German nationalism after 1806 in relation to French revolutionary ideas and to reconstruct a radical revolutionary, i.e. a ‘French Revolution’, context for the idea of German national unity. Such a ‘French Revolution’ context questions the view that the ‘Teutomania’ emerging in the context of the Wars of Liberation and linked to German national liberation can only be interpreted as the precursor to chauvinist German nationalism of later periods. The investigation focuses on the political ideas and militancy of Karl Follen (1796–1840) as they found expression in his outline of an all-German constitution and his martial poetry. It delineates the overlap, and the differences, between Follen's constitutional outline and the French republican constitution of 1793, and asks whether the differences, which derive from a greater focus on cultural specificity in Follen's constitution, could be due to the German need for imaginative nation-building under conditions perceived as cultural and political oppression. The essay discusses this idea by exploring the pronounced similarity between the approaches to national liberation taken by Follen and Frantz Fanon. Both Follen and Fanon insist that a strong cultural identity linked to uncompromising militancy are necessary for national and social liberation to succeed.